February 06, 2008

Charles Wilp's Afri-Cola

Last week I saw the Monks Documentary Transatlantic Feedback (link) at the Goethe Institute. The movie is a bit on the long side (as most of these kind of pics tend to be) but still tons of great footage - including pristine versions of those Monks clips you find on youtube (link)

The movie also dives into some of the strange German Ad culture of the time, I never realized just how much of an art project the Monks actually were. One of the greatest German Ad-men of all time was Charles Wilp, who makes an appearance in the film as well Wilp is the man behind the whacked out campaign for Afri-cola. Now, after watching this commercial (link) I couldn't help but think this was some art thing - not a real ad for a real product. But Afri-Cola is a indeed a real German sof'drink - it even has Nazi links (link).

Charles Wilp made a bunch of these amazing ads - some of them are on youtube (link1) (link2) (link3), they have already made runs around the internets (link) and Wilp, who died in 2005, has a website as well (link)